When I sit down to create a list of skills my students need I tend to begin with very basic reading skills. Part of this comes from the community of students that I work with-- remedial reading high school kids. They tend to lack the very basic strategies that most capable readers use without another thought. Therefore, my list includes basic comprehension skills, summarizing, paraphrasing, evaluation, analysis skills-- and I tend to use technology to help my students access these skills.
When presented with the "Partnership for the 21st Century Skills" website my first thought was a bit of disbelief: the website is (proudly) endorsed by a series of technology companies. The pages look great, colorful and enticing. The companies make a strong plea for teaching our students skills that are appliable in today's work force. Over all, however, I was not impressed. First, this site will be completely out of date for our students upon their arrival in the work world. Second, unless these companies will be dishing out the technology and software (and forcing our districts to change their stance on use of filters), these ideas are great, but impractical. Beyond that, we are educators are called to teach content first... and YES, I believe in implimenting as much technology as possible into my classroom (kids love it, and kids that buy into something tend to learn something)... but first and foremost, I have to teach my students to read.
You want change in the workforce, Companies who support this "Partnership"? Shell out some cash to our districts.
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. You had an interesting point about the proposal being outdated. That will most likely be the case when it comes to how we use technology, however I think the underlining skills will be similar (complex communication, expert thinking, collaboration, ect). The English proposal was moving students from independent learners to working with others to solve complex problems. Certainly, this too will be refined as the work force changes, but the basic skills of collaboration are something that will not be going away soon.
Businesses that support this initiative should not support it only in writing, but take action, like you said. The positive press on their generosity would carry a long way with educators and students. I too believe in using technology to enhance learning of our students, and agree that our focus needs to remain on teaching students how to read.
You certainly do make a good point about the need to first and foremost teach your students to read. And, I uphold the same theory myself. However, is it possible to teach students to read 'the 21st century' way? I'm not sure that in 10 years from now your students will be reading from a textbook. They may only have eBooks or Kindles, etc... We have to begin to teach our students to read, but we need to start doing so utilizing the skills needed for a 21st century workforce.
ReplyDeleteDr. L.
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post because unlike many other's responses, your's challenged the site. Having taught remedial reading students at the high school level ,I definitely related to your post. The students who I taught could barely figure out Microsoft Word let alone mutiple 21st century skills using technology. I tried to implement Noodletools in their curriculum last year thinking it would help them to conceptualize the notecard and source card creation process when completing a research paper. This program is done all online and is suppossed to teach students how to do these skills using technology (it's supposed to be easier?). What ended up happening was the students did not understand the program, became frustrated, and gave up. Needless to say, I did not receive very many research papers and the ones I did receive looked like they were completed by third graders. Sometimes, simple is better, and paper and pencil is better when it comes to lower level learners who tend to get overwhelmed with all of this new technology; just like the teachers!